


Loss

by Sasha713



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-12
Updated: 2012-04-12
Packaged: 2017-11-03 12:40:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/381436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sasha713/pseuds/Sasha713
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Continuum tag... Sam Carter feels his loss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loss

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Samfan13](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Samfan13/gifts).



1

He was dead. He was gone. In one moment, one flurry of anger, his blood swelled, killing him, his last thoughts, his last command forming on his lips. Get to the gate.

_ “Jack!” Daniel calls, and they were both at his side, trying to help him as he lay dying, his breathes stilted and pained. _

_ “Go to the gate...” he murmurs, voice full of pain, shaking like she has never heard it. _

_ "Not without you...” she says fiercely, hoping for one last miracle to save him. She needs him to be saved. Wouldn’t –couldn’t- leave him behind. _

_ “Go...” he stutters on his last breath, his features slackening as he dies. She looks at him in shock, unable to form thoughts or words as the horror before her unfolds. Ba’al dead from Mitchell’s gunfire, the General lying there, so still. He couldn’t be dead. Not him. Never him. _

_ Cameron’s words are blurred in her brain, not working through the shock. _

_ “Carter!” He was closer now, but she could do nothing but stare down at the man she loved, dead, right here on the Tok’ra home world, the sand surrounding him within the pyramid. _

_ She is yanked backwards by her vest... _

She stood in the cold, frozen inside more than out, her eyes seemingly focused on the iced wall before her but seeing only his face, his skin paling so quickly, features slackening as he faded away.

No words were between them. Nothing now. Nothing. He was gone, and this time, he wasn’t coming back.

“Sam.” She feels jolted, her vision blurred and she doesn’t understand what is going on around her.

“I don’t know...” She says, her voice fading, pain blocking all her thoughts, numbness taking hold over her senses. All she feels is cold.

“Look...” he is closer now, his face next to hers, eyes determined. “I know what just happened back there, but we need you in the here and now...whereever or whenever that is.”

She looks at him, his words sinking in through the sharp edges of grief. Of loss.

“Right...” she nods, speaking to him and herself. _Act now, think later._ Tears welled in her eyes, too frozen to fall, the sting in her chest focusing in her mind. _Cold. Survival. Act._

She lurches into motion...

2

The moment he had spoken from underneath the cold weather gear, she had known it was him, and even though she was pretty certain that he wasn’t the Jack they had left behind, her heart had still skipped a hopeful beat, as if telling her _‘Hey, this is_ still _Jack.’_

He’d called her an Astronaut, showing no other signs of recognition, but her heart didn’t care. Her heart gave way to the relief she felt both from the grief and the guilt that they had been forced to leave their Jack behind.

She stood beside Daniel’s bed, looking at him as if he was the best thing she had seen her entire life, the pain of his loss dulling with the appearance of this man that wasn’t her Jack but, for all intents and purposes,was _still_ Jack O’Neill.

To have him alive _somewhere_ was much better than the prospect of him being forever gone from this world.

She knew that the moment he walked out, her grief would return, because he wasn’t the slightest bit interested in their story, his eyes hiding his disbelief in their claims. She could see. She knew him. Knew a _portion_ of him.  Knew when he was too stubborn and too sceptical to believe what they had told him.

She wanted to run to him, to wrap her arms around him and never let go, whisper all the things that she had been too late to say to _her_ Jack in his ear, beg him not to walk away because any Jack was better than no Jack. She couldn’t deal with the hole burning into her chest. Couldn’t think past the fact that she had been looking at him with her heart in her eyes and he had still walked away.

His parting words to the guard outside tore into her heart, angry over what they had said about his son.

Her emotions raw, she stayed where she was beside Daniel’s bed, gripping his hand in hers because she needed the familiarity of _someone_ as Colonel Jack O’Neill walked out, leaving _them_ behind, closing the panel behind him with a finalising snap.

That was what had stopped her from going after him in the end. He wasn’t her Jack. Seeing him as her Jack would only destroy her memories of the man she had loved for longer than she could remember.

He wasn’t her Jack. Just like she knew, the grief came back, the numb reprieve he had caused fading as if it hadn’t been there, the dulled pain of seeing her Jack’s eyes lose their life on the floor of that Tok’ra Temple coming back to spear at her chest, swelling inside her, debilitating her.

Daniel gripped her hand back, silently giving her the comfort she needed, because she knew that she wasn’t strong enough right now.

She could deal with anything. The Interrogation that was sure to come, the danger of near death on the ice, the fear that she had lost not only Jack, but Teal’c and Daniel too. She could maybe handle that. But she couldn’t handle the fact that she was about to be forced into a life without Jack O’Neill...

Fini


End file.
